Confirmation of sorts over BankWest and Suncorp offers

The Financial Review is sticking by its report yesterday that Commonwealth Bank made an offer of as much as $3 billion to HBOS for Bank of Western Australia. The Herald Sun confirmed the CBA offer - made last week but since withdrawn - in a follow up today.

CBA advised the Australian Securities Exchange early yesterday that "at this time [the bank] confirms we do not have any offer with HBOS to acquire BankWest".

Meanwhile Suncorp's managing director told a business lunch in Sydney yesterday, when asked about speculation of an offer to buy the group's banking business, "If we think there's value in someone else having part of the assets that we have in our portfolio then we'll consider what we do about trading that asset, but we are focussed on driving organic growth of our organisation."

Mulcahy made much the same point in a long interview published yesterday at Business Spectator.